Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) - Rose B. Mashal Page 0,126
sucked both of my lips inside of my mouth, took a deep breath in through my nose, let it out, then nodded.
It was the prince’s turn to nod, but his nod was in understanding, not in response like mine was. He moved my hair out of my face and offered me a small smile. “Would you like to sit down?” he offered softly.
I nodded again, and he led me to sit on the nearest couch, sitting beside me then taking my hand in his–which I gave him willingly, was comforted by it even.
“We’re talking about 9/11, huh?” he asked, and my chest swelled just hearing the date.
“Yeah,” I said in a quiet voice, then started chewing on my bottom lip.
The prince nodded; apparently he had remembered me telling him about my first panic attack happening almost fourteen years ago, and with what I’d just told him...he put two and two together.
“I remember that day very well,” he said. “It was a horrible thing to watch, my father was really pissed, called it animalistic act.”
“He did?” I wondered, a hint of surprise lacing my voice. Yeah, the king was nice, kind and seemed like a great person, but was he really mad or even frowned upon it?
“Yes, Princess,” the prince replied, “I think the entire world was, not just my father.”
“Well, not Muslims.” I shook my head, then rested it on the back of the couch, sighing. It just couldn’t be that they were upset; I found it unbelievable for any Muslim to be.
“Yes, we were,” the prince insisted. “Princess, the ones who did that...I have a hard time calling them humans, let alone Muslims.”
“Really?” I looked at him. “You’re telling me your religion doesn’t tell you to kill? Please!” I rolled my eyes. He couldn’t just convince me otherwise; I knew that to be a fact about Muslims: they kill in the name of their religion.
“It does,” the prince replied, “but only when defending your life, your family, your land, your money, and only if your life was threatened in those cases–not innocent people who did nothing to you.”
“They were innocent,” I nodded, feeling the ache in my chest as I said the words. “They had no right to kill them.” A tear escaped my eyes; the pain of that loss had never ever lessened through all of these years.
“Princess, don’t always look at Muslims to judge Islam. Muslims are humans: they make mistakes. Look at Islam, it’s from Allah, and it’s perfect,” he told me, and to be honest, I had to think for a minute about those words.
Humans make mistakes, it was true, but their religion…I mean, just look what they wanted to do to his sister.
“And it tells you to kill girls for making mistakes?” I asked, not waiting for him to answer, for I knew he couldn’t–I’d just proved him wrong.
“It doesn’t, Princess,” he replied. “It’s a sickening tradition that God only knows how much I wish to wipe out of the kingdom forever.”
“You’re a prince, you’re the next in line to be a king. You can.”
“I’ve told you before, Princess: we only obey rules, we don’t make them up, not even my father has the power to do that,” he paused. “Well, he does, but people’s reactions could be really bad.”
“Or could be really good,” I said. Something in me wished so hard that they would do something about it. It was such a bad thing, and the excitement I felt at it being true, that they might stop doing that, was so great that my stomach fluttered at the thought.
The prince sighed. “Could be. Back to the topic we were talking about,” he said, maybe trying to avoid talking about Honor Killing any further–or maybe not, I didn’t know. “I was ten when it happened.”
“Yeah,” I said, not really getting the why he was telling me his age at the time.
“I was only a kid,” he said, once more pointing out his age.
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m trying to let you see that it wasn’t me who did it,” he replied, and I looked at him as if he had two heads.
“I know that!”
I think…
“It wasn’t me, or the rest of the one and a half billion Muslims on Planet Earth, Princess,” he said. “And I can assure you that all of us are ashamed of the fact that those people called themselves Muslims, because if they truly were, they wouldn’t kill an innocent soul. They never would, not even one, let alone thousands.”